Computer and data communications networks continue to proliferate due to declining costs, increasing performance of computer and networking equipment, and increasing demand for communication bandwidth. Communications networks—including wide area networks (“WANs”), local area networks (“LANs”), metropolitan area networks (“MANs”), and storage area networks (“SANS”)—allow increased productivity and use of distributed computers or stations through the sharing of resources, the transfer of voice and data, and the processing of voice, data and related information at the most efficient locations.
Moreover, as organizations have recognized the economic benefits of using communications networks, network applications such as electronic mail, voice and data transfer, host access, and shared and distributed databases are increasingly used as a means to increase user productivity. This increased demand, together with the growing number of distributed computing resources, has resulted in a rapid expansion of the number of installed networks.
There has also been a corresponding increase in network links within the network as the networks grow. Monitoring devices are sometimes used to monitor the network traffic across the network links. Software is often used to control the operation of the monitoring devices. Frequently, the software providers wish to control the use of the software used to monitor devices. In particular, in some cases, the software provider issues a number of licenses. The number of licenses may correspond with the number of monitoring devices on which the software may run within the system. For example, when a monitoring device is in operation, the software will be loaded. Once the maximum number of licenses is used, in order to use a different monitoring device, the software must be disabled on one or more monitoring device. The selected monitoring device may then load the software to monitor the network link. While such an approach may allow software provider to control the distribution and/or use of their software, such an approach may be cumbersome for the users.